What would you like to see HP build?
HP has reached out to me and a few others to interact with them to make sure they understand what consumers want. I am sitting down with some HP folks this afternoon so what would you like me to ask them? What suggestions do you want to get through to them for future products? Don’t make do with what they produce, let them know now what you need and I’ll pass it along to them. But you’d better hurry, my meeting is in a few hours.
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Bring back TC1100! :-)
I have an HP pavilion computer. It is very ‘busy’ – lots of lights and buttons on the hardware. It’s distracting – very un-zen (is that a word?). I would like to see them strive to make products that are more fung shuei (sp?) / zen / relaxing to interact with. There are so many blue lights on the pavilion I find it hard to focus on the screen. Especially in darker environments. There are numerous studies showing that w/ more than 5-7 items in view the brain has to work hard to filter out the excess. This results in a tiring user experience.
I would like to see them offer linux, as Dell and Lenovo are.
I’d like to see a successor to the HP Jornada 720/728. Same size, OLED screen. The OS and Full-Fledged Office applications (instead of pocket versions) would be in flash ROM for instant on capability and so that there would be an upgrade path. Battery life no less than 8 hours. USB ports, CF card slot(s) and built in VGA support. Touch screen viewable in broad daylight. Backlight keys. Batteries not integral to unit (user replacable. WiFi and/Bluetooth.
Hmmm… the list…
1) A refreshed PDA – high res, decent WiFi, largish screen, storage card slot, modern/hi-speed processor, large (8/16GB) built-in storage, DAP-only mode where you start songs, they play, but battery usage is minimal.
2) Bring back the old calculator division! It should never have been shut down.
3) All the normal requests — smaller, more efficient, cooler Media Centers, Tablets, etc — but you already knew that.
4) Printers with decent sized and affordable ink cartridges. They’ve been giving away the printers to sell the ink. We all know ink doesn’t need to be the most expensive fluid any of buys on a regular basis! Oh, and making them pigment-based would be a plus.
5) Easy way to not order/strip extra programs from PC’s. But keep basic virus software for the folks so they’re protected from the first boot.
6) Better OOB experiences – pre-boot the machines and let all the set-up take place at the factory so the first boot at home is quick and gets you going asap.
7) Always ship restoration DVD’s with the machines.
8) Make a Cintiq clone that is affordable.
9) Challenge Apple (in particular, Samsung comes to mind as well) in the design department.
10) Create a square box PC that anyone can make a “cover” for — wooden, stylized, etc and keep the dimensions consistent. I could get a custom case made that I could upgrade the interior of by just pulling the “PC box” out of every other year or so. Plus, you could order cases with a wider variety of styles, and never have to deal with “PC maker” skills.
That’s probably enough.
I have grown to hate HP/Compaq products. It seems like every single one I’ve ever used has had problems, and bad designs. Whether it be a printer, or a desktop computer, or even a friends laptop, all have had issues. First of all let me start by saying that the inside of some of the older HP desktops have absolutely terrible designs. I can’t say anything about their newer ones because I’ve stopped buying their products. As for the old ones, trying to change a hardware component is like solving a puzzle. If you want to get to the CPU or RAM, you need to dig your way through all kinds of cables and other components before you get down to the motherboard. This problem arises because they try to make their desktop computers somewhat smaller and more squat than others, why? I have no idea. But it makes swapping drives in and out nearly impossible. I wanted to take a few drives out of an old HP desktop and after 45 minutes of trying to figure out if you were even supposed to be able to get them out, I started to tear apart the case. I think if I actually wanted to take them out the right way, I would have had to remove the entire PSU just to pull a drive out. Oh and don’t even get me started with all the hidden screws inside this desktop, some didn’t even seem like they were on an angle that would make them possible to unscrew. The entire inside is unintuitive and quite obviously not meant to used by the end user.
Now lets move onto their product appearance. Right now I see HP as a company who just wants to sucker people into buying their computers, rather then providing a good product. I would imagine that most of HP’s home desktop/laptop sales are bought through third party retailers such as Best Buy or Circuit City. And often times the people who don’t know much about computers go there to buy them. Maybe HP knows this and thats why they could win the award for most shiny stickers and flashing lights on the front of their computers. Its like a fishing lure where they reel in the unsuspecting.
If HP wants to start to regain my and many other peoples trust, you can begin with the following.
*Make the inside of your desktop computers user friendly. Believe it or not people do open up your products and play around with the hardware components. Maybe you haven’t gotten this complaint very often because the majority of people who buy your products from a third party retailer are those who don’t know much about computers and don’t ever upgrade their computers, which brings me to my next point…
*Stop trying to market the less computer educated, start trying to offer a good product. I know that it might seem like the easiest and fastest way to make some money is to put some shiny stickers on the front of your computers and make them appealing to the people who don’t really know what they need in a computer. Yes HP we know that the computer has a lightscribe drive, do you also mention right on the front that the drive requires special CD to use? I don’t think so. Again trying to nab the less computer educated.
*Try redesigning your desktops… I don’t know what it is about them. They are just ugly in my opinion. I hate the flaps that cover the disk drives. They are usually really low quality which can be felt as soon as you push them. If you want to make those same flaps electronic and motorized, please feel free to do so. And I really dislike the often very low quality feel of the CD storage compartments that you have on some of your computers. Its usually just a plastic flap with some plastic hinges and it stores maybe 10 CD/DVDs. I’d rather have nothing on the top of my computer than have a broken plastic flap.
Well anyway thats about all I have for now, given a bit more time to think about this I assure you I’d have many more complaints, but hopefully I’ve submitted this in time : P
1 Thing:
A printer that can receive print commands via the internet, so I can print to my home printer from wherever I am–as long as there is an internet connection on both ends. (must work on a mac too).
Lemme know when it’s ready!
Calculators are still there: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscmisc/vac/us/en/sm/calculators/index.html?jumpid=re_R295_prodexp/busproducts/computing/calculators
Tablet with TC1100 form factor, dedicated graphics card, as much hard drive capacity and memory capacity as physically possible
Re-issue something like the portable hand scanner they used to make.
Swipe ACROSS a page a few times then auto-stitch the text images together into one page. USB to other devices with OCR, etc.